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gregladen | August 26, 2016Using executive power, Governor Mark Dayton, recognized as one of the best governors in the US, has laid out protections for pollinators in Minnesota.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture is ordered to implement recently developed recommendations related to neonicotinoid pesticides. Potential users must demonstrate a real need for the products, and use them properly. This and other state agencies will coordinate and develop a Pollinator Protection Team to develop and implement statewide goals, and keep track of things. The Governor created a Committee on Pollinator Protection to advise…
jrosenhouse | August 24, 2016The AP is breathlessly reporting that 85 out of 154 people coming from private interests (as opposed to governmental functionaries) who met with Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State were also donors to the Clinton Foundation. The headline: “Many Donors To Clinton Foundation Met With Her At State.”
Perhaps you are wondering why this is news. Big donors to the Clinton Foundation are generally major players in world affairs, and those are precisely the kind of people the Secretary of State will naturally meet with. Were the people in question unworthy of a meeting with the…
jdupuis | August 24, 2016I have a son who will be finishing up his undergrad in physics this coming school year with an eye towards possible graduate work in math. As you can imagine, I occasionally see a link or two on the web that I think he might particularly interesting or useful. Thinking on that fact, I surmised that perhaps a) this kind of post might be more efficient and b) other undergrad students might find those links interesting or useful as well. Hence, this series of posts here on the blog.
What is it like to understand advanced mathematics?
How to Write Your First Paper
How to write proofs: a quick…
lborkowski | August 22, 2016A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Alicia Menendez at Fusion: Pregnant in the time of Zika: How Congress failed women like me
Vann R. Newkirk II in The Atlantic: Can free markets keep people healthy?
Brittney Martin in the Dallas Morning News: Texas' rate of pregnancy-related deaths nearly doubles
Sara Kliff and Ezra Klein at Vox: Public option? Status quo? Collapse? What comes next for Obamacare
Peggy Lowe at NPR/ Harvest Media: Working "The Chain," Slaughterhouse Workers Face Lifelong Injuries
David Dobbs in National Geographic: Why There's New Hope About Ending Blindness
jrosenhouse | August 21, 2016I have previously mentioned that the Washington International was the best run and most enjoyable tournament I have ever played in. One reason was the fact that all equipment, sets and clocks, was provided. And not just any equipment! Look at these beautiful wooden chess sets we were given to play with:
They even gave us little clipboards for our scoresheets, since the table cloths were a little soft.
And just look at how spacious the playing rooms were:
So much space between boards and between tables! Those of us accustomed to the Amateur Team East, where hundreds of players are…
esiegel | August 21, 2016 “Failure I can live with. Not trying is what I can’t handle!” -Sanya Richards-Ross
It’s been another big week here at Starts With A Bang, with stories covering the Universe near and far. I myself was on vacation, but thanks to our generous Patreon supporters, I was able to put in the resources to get a week ahead and have a whole slew of stories to publish from afar. If you missed anything this week, go back and check it all out now (especially since I know some of you don't read the full stories) so that you don't miss out:
How small can a piece of the Universe be and still expand? (for Ask…
esiegel | August 20, 2016"I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the Universe. Other stars, other planets and eventually other life. A supernova! Creation itself! I was there. I wanted to see it and be part of the moment. And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull!" -Ronald D. Moore, Battlestar Galactica
When we look out at the night sky, we aren’t seeing the Universe everywhere as it is exactly at this moment, but rather as it was some time ago. Because the speed of light is finite and the stars are many light…
jrosenhouse | August 19, 2016My reward for winning in Round One was to be paired up for Round Two. My opponent was the top seed in the section, with a rating of 2179. I received my second white in a row. Here's what happened.
I started with my usual king pawn, and he replied with the Modern Defense. This was a fine how do you do. The Modern is a rare bird at the highest level these days, though grandmaster Tiger Hillarp Persson has defended its honor. In the Modern, black simply allows white to occupy the center and gain space, believing that he will later be able to chip away at white's position from the sides…
esiegel | August 19, 2016"Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do." -Golda Meir
It’s been 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang for us, and when we look out at a distant object in the Universe, we’re seeing it as it was in the past. Its age — as it appears — is determined only by how long the light took for it to travel from that object to our eyes, but to someone living there, it will also appear that the Universe is 13.8 billion years old.
Looking back a variety of distances corresponds to a variety of times since the Big Bang. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and A.…
esiegel | August 18, 2016"And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium,
And chlorine, cobalt, carbon, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others, but they haven't been discarvard." -Tom Lehrer
Stars fuse hydrogen into helium, then helium into carbon and then it’s up the periodic table to higher and heavier ones via other fusion and neutron-capture mechanisms. But there are three elements in between helium and carbon: lithium, beryllium, and boron. Those three elements can’t be made by conventional fusion, and in fact, aren’…
jrosenhouse | August 17, 2016I know I haven't been around for a while. Sorry about that. A bit of the summer doldrums I guess. But now I have big news to report, for the handful of people who like my chess posts.
As big a chess fan as I am, I have been mostly retired from tournament play for a number of years. Sure, I would play in the big team tournament in February, and occasionally I would get the bug and go to the World Open or something like that, but it's been quite a while since I made any serious effort to improve my play.
But as I reported previously, some good results in the team tournaments over several…
esiegel | August 17, 2016"Reality is what kicks back when you kick it. This is just what physicists do with their particle accelerators. We kick reality and feel it kick back. From the intensity and duration of thousands of those kicks over many years, we have formed a coherent theory of matter and forces, called the standard model, that currently agrees with all observations." -Victor J. Stenger
Over the past month, four big experiments looking for new physics have announced their latest results, and all four have come up empty. At the LHC, ATLAS and CMS failed to confirm the existence of a new particle, leaving us…
esiegel | August 14, 2016 “Failure I can live with. Not trying is what I can’t handle!” -Sanya Richards-Ross
It’s been a crazy week here at Starts With A Bang, including a pretty good meteor shower and some other rather remarkable stories. I just recorded a radio show with Dr. David Livingston of The Space Show this past Tuesday, and it's downloadable or available for streaming right here!
Screenshot from my 2016 episode of The Space Show, via http://www.thespaceshow.com/show/09-aug-2016/broadcast-2754-dr.-ethan-s….
I've confirmed with Forbes that yes, they swear they no longer block ad-blockers, and so if you're…
esiegel | August 13, 2016"We now have the best picture of how galaxies like our own formed their stars." -Casey Papovich
The expanding Universe is counterintuitive in a lot of ways: on the largest scales, the distances between galaxies are increasing at an alarming rate, yet the distances between the stars in our own galaxies or the atoms in our bodies don’t appear to change. It makes one wonder whether there’s a size limit to how small a piece of the Universe can be and still expand?
If everything expanded as the Universe did, then the coins would need to be replaced by paint. Image credit: "Fun with Astronomy" by…
esiegel | August 12, 2016"A lot of legends, a lot of people, have come before me. But this is my time." -Usain Bolt
The Olympics is an incredible time for athletes in all sports, and a time to celebrate the fastest, strongest, most agile, and all the other superlative achievements the human body is capable of. Yet for those of you hoping for a new record-breaking performance in the men’s 100 meters, I’ve got bad news: it’s extraordinarily unlikely.
Usain Bolt with his official world record time in 2009. Image credit: American Foreign Press.
Usain Bolt is an athlete whose prowess and performances shouldn’t be…
gregladen | August 8, 2016If so, I have a recommendation for you.
We recently sold our old house and bought a new one, and moved.
The main reason we did this: to get closer to Amanda’s place of work. We managed to turn a commute that ran from 35 minutes to 1.5 hours (on really bad winter days) each way to one short enough that Amanda will usually bike, with about a five or six minute drive on non-biking days. Probably a ten minute drive on the worst winter days.
The main reason we did this now rather than a couple of years ago: our house was under water thanks to the GB Economic Crisis. In fact, we weren’t sure if…
gregladen | August 6, 2016I had been utterly unengaged with with TV about the time that I met this particular cute girl, and she told me that she love the West Wing and watched it every week. There was, if I recall correctly, one more episode showing in the penultimate season, and we watched it together. I liked it.
We then watched, mainly via Netflix DVD rental, but also, borrowing her parent's Season Five DVD's, the entire rest of the show prior to the beginning of the final season, Season 7. Then we watched Season 7 together. It was great.
Eventually, two things were to happen. One is that I re-watched the…
gregladen | August 3, 2016This is a blog rant. But first, a bit of blog appreciation to the select number of individuals who suggested to us that the Shark was the best vacuum cleaner for us, in a recent Facebook Discussion.
I have to say, that when I saw S.H. suggest the Shark, I figured that the chances were pretty high that we would end up with a Shark, S.H. has always given me the very best advice on everything.
Anyway, the main point of comparison for us was between various models of the Dyson and various models of the Shark. Side by side they ended up being pretty similar but the Shark actually has some…
gregladen | August 2, 2016This is one of those "what I had for lunch web log entries." Old fashioned style, and I'm not talking about the drink. Probably.
You'll notice that I've not blogged for half a month. For the last three months, Amanda, Huxley, and I have been engaged in a very time consuming operation. We fixed up our old house (it needed nothing more than cosmetic fixing, but we did ALL of that), then searched for a new house, bought one, and then moved into it. We then immediately ran into some delays and difficulties in getting settled, and are no where near normal, but we are getting there fast and in…
jdupuis | August 2, 2016I'm afraid the answer to that might be "Yes." Perhaps I'm the only one who's still interested and perhaps not, but there seems to be little movement towards launching a review of Canadian Science Library infrastructure.
Why do I think such a review is a good idea?
First of all, I've documented the devastation wrought on that infrastructure under the Conservatives. Not only do I chronicle the destruction, but at the same time you can clearly see from the assembled articles I link to in that post how much the various opposition parties -- including the now-in-government Liberals -- used those…